Sunday, 21 February 2016

The Chicken Diaries - What chickens have I got?

I have been thinking a lot about the sexes of my chickens, as well as what the hell they are.

Cacciatore and Spot were similar to start but as they've grown they have started to look different!

Both of them had the barred look on their feathers - making me wonder if they had a bit of Barred Plymouth Rock in them. Below are some purebred Plymouth Rocks - the paler one is the male and the darker is the female. Pure males have 2 of the barring gene and thus end up with lighter bars.

However, I noticed that there might be a bit of Araucana mixed in for Cacciatore and maybe for Bubbles too! Here is Bubbles - look at her comb.

She doesn't have a comb like the other two, it seems to be just a bit knobbly. Apparently, the breeds that have pea combs include Araucanas and Brahmas. And it seems to me she only has one row as opposed to 3 rows. A single row indicates a female, three rows a male. Look at these pictures of female and male pea combs:

But females can have a red comb at a young age too, like this one:

Araucanas can have beards and a fluffy head. Here is a lavendar Araucana female:

And if you look at Cacciatore, she has that funny feathering on her head too! So perhaps there is some Araucana genes in there, since the 3 original chicks are from the same batch.